Comments on: Merciful and Just? http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/2011/01/05/merciful-and-just/ Discussions of religion and ethics from an atheist perspective Thu, 23 May 2013 10:44:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Kalindra http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/2011/01/05/merciful-and-just/comment-page-1/#comment-2270 Kalindra Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:39:47 +0000 http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/?p=1841#comment-2270 Actual “justice” requires that the person who committed the crime is the one who is punished, not merely that someone is punished. If, for example, a person commits murder, the courts can’t just convict the first person the police pick up, as that would not be just.

The argument here is “perfect justice” vs. “perfect mercy.” A god who is perfectly just would be required to always carry the sentence out on the person who committed the crime; perfect mercy would require never carrying out the sentence. Imagine someone close to you was assaulted, and the culprit caught and found guilty. If the judge decided to sentence the guilty party to zero years, would you laud him as being merciful, or decry the sentence as a miscarriage of justice?

To me, the idea of Jesus “paying” for human sin seems to much like the medieval practice of punishing a whipping boy for the infractions of the young prince: the prince is the recipient of the court’s mercy and the whipping boy is the object of injustice.

]]> By: Caleb http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/2011/01/05/merciful-and-just/comment-page-1/#comment-2256 Caleb Fri, 07 Jan 2011 00:46:24 +0000 http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/?p=1841#comment-2256 It is just for God to receive compensation for our sin. It’s no different from paying someone else’s McDonald’s bill. (Bad analogy, but it works)

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